When Black Friday comes I'm gonna dig myself a holeGonna lay down in it till I satisfy my soulGonna let the world pass by me, the Archbishop gonna sanctify meAnd if he don't come across I' m gonna let it roll

Renowned British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has bet 100 dollars (70 euros) that a mega-experiment this week will not find an elusive particle seen as a holy grail of cosmic science, he said Tuesday.

Note: The LHC broke down and repairs would mean that they would start colliding things in late 2009. The Higgs Boson is supposed to be the particle that gives other particles their mass. Which leads us to the question, Where did the Higgs get its mass? To solve that, we'll build the ELHC, the Even Larger Hadron Collider.

Apparently another scientist who thinks pouring money into the LHC is bullshit is Nobel Prize winning chemist Kary Mullis.

"Do we need to use billions of dollars to build machines that maybe will put a few of our rightfully treasured eggheads in touch with things so far from what can be engineered into useful items that only they will get a thrill out of finding them? Do we need to do this when there is an obvious threat over our heads, something falling right now onto our planet? Something big, heavy, and headed our way? Something that already has our number on it, a number we could read if we would just point enough telescopes out there to see it?"

LA GUAIRA, Venezuela – Russian warships sailed into port in Venezuela on Tuesday in a show of strength as Moscow seeks to counter U.S. influence in Latin America. Russia's first such deployment in the Caribbean since the Cold War is timed to coincide with President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Venezuela, the first ever by a Russian president.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Since launching two weeks ago on Rakuten, a major Japanese web shopping mall, the Wishroom shop has sold over 300 men's bras for 2,800 yen ($30) each. The shop also stocks men's panties, as well as lingerie for women.

"I like this tight feeling. It feels good," Wishroom representative Masayuki Tsuchiya told Reuters as he modeled the bra, which can be worn discreetly under men's clothing.

Nov. 24 (Bloomberg) -- A professor at the diplomatic academy of Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the U.S. will break into six parts because of the nation’s financial crisis.

“The dollar isn’t secured by anything,” Igor Panarin said in an interview transcribed by Russian newspaper Izvestia today. “The country’s foreign debt has grown like an avalanche; this is a pyramid, which has to collapse.”

Although one can't help but agree that the monetary system is indeed a gigantic pyramid scam that's bound to collapse. The professor however miscalculates. All the US has to do to fill the black hole the monetary system is creating is to invade another country.

BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) -- Fourteen sailors are still missing from a Thai trawler that was sunk last week by the Indian navy as a suspected pirate ship, the vessel's owner said Tuesday.Indian navy frigate INS Tabar

The Indian navy frigate INS Tabar was reported to have battled a "pirate vessel" last week.

...

Last week, India's navy reported that the frigate INS Tabar had battled a pirate "mother vessel" in the gulf November 18, leaving the ship ablaze and likely sunk. Wicharn said that vessel was his ship, which was in the process of being seized by pirates when it came under fire.

In one of the posts on this here blog, my not-always-accurate bullshit detector raised red flags in various degrees of malodorousness about the report that Sarah Palin didnt know Africa is a continent and not a country. It turns out that there was indeed an off-chance that it wasnt bullshit. Or at least the odds that a government official, duly elected by the American people, wouldnt know that Africa isnt a country, are shorter than I have previously believed.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.

Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions compiled by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI).

"Blackwater Worldwide today announced that its 183-foot ship, the McArthur, stands ready to assist the shipping industry as it struggles with the increasing problem of piracy in [Somalia's] Gulf of Aden," the firm says in a statement. "

Monday, November 17, 2008

A crowd "asserting the right to be naked outside" appeared at the meeting of the volunteer advisory board, said Dewey Potter, parks spokeswoman. "This is how we learn and find out what people want," she said.

Triggerfish, also known as cell-site simulators or digital analyzers, are nothing new: the technology was used in the 1990s to hunt down renowned hacker Kevin Mitnick. By posing as a cell tower, triggerfish trick nearby cell phones into transmitting their serial numbers, phone numbers, and other data to law enforcement. Most previous descriptions of the technology, however, suggested that because of range limitations, triggerfish were only useful for zeroing in on a phone's precise location once cooperative cell providers had given a general location.

Sherpa's team, during its month-long expedition, picked up 965 kg (2,100 pounds) of cans, gas canisters, kitchen waste, tents, parts of an Italian helicopter that crashed 35 years ago and remains of the body of a British climber who died in 1972.

In addition, his team also brought down 65 kg of human waste produced by its 18 members, which it handed over to a local environment group at the base camp for management.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

The double-entendres, the one-liners, the fact that his suits never wrinkle even after a fight. The new Bond is just too... ordinary. I suppose Generation Y, steeped as they are in ultra-violent videogames, doesnt appreciate witty word-play any longer.

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blogand popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turnsout it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has comeforward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr.Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s aput-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the HardingInstitute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clipsof him on YouTube are fakes.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

“The only countries that seem to have enough sperm are those that pay —like the U.S. and Spain — or the countries that retain anonymity,” saidAllan Pacey, a member of the British Fertility Society that warned ofthe shortage in the British Medical Journal.

Monday, November 10, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama over the weekend scrubbed his transitionWeb site, deleting most of what had been a massive agenda for his firstterm that appears on his campaign's site.

Gone from Change.gov are the promises on how an Obama administrationwould handle 25 agenda items — from Iraq and immigration to taxes andurban policy — which the campaign first laid out on the Web sitewww.BarackObama.com.

James Bond is out for revenge in the new film, Quantum of Solace,opening in the United States on Nov. 14. But here in the real world,the intelligence community is badly in need of a superspy to solve someof its biggest conundrums. Here are five missions we’d love Agent 007to tackle.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Two of three friends who jumped naked into Moosehead Lake last summerfor a free Skinny Dip sandwich at the Black Frog Restaurant inGreenville were found guilty of indecent exposure Monday in 13thDistrict Court.

The court found that Bernard Beckwith, 31, of Poland and ChristianSimpson, 37, of Bethel knowingly exposed their genitals in a publicplace under circumstances that likely caused affront or alarm to others...

Crystal Stilwell, 25, of Bath, who had accompanied the men in the naked jump for the free sandwich, was found not guilty.

Yeah! Fine the guys. Let the women expose themselves without fear of prosecution. In fact I would definitely support a law that uses taxpayer money to subsidize such actions.